


Final Arrangements

by Rosada



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, M/M, Mentions of Cancer, Mentions of Death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-07
Updated: 2014-05-07
Packaged: 2018-01-23 22:59:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1582541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rosada/pseuds/Rosada
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles is just glad he didn't have to resort to Craigslist for this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Final Arrangements

**Author's Note:**

> Rated Mature mostly for mentions of death, digging one's way out of a grave, and vampire-related violence. Edited slightly from my Tumblr fic of the same name.
> 
> Updates likely to be sporadic, but I'll do my best! I love to hear comments/feedback, either here or on Tumblr.

Being dead isn’t as bad as it’s cracked up to be. Sure, sometimes there are those moments of _holy shit I was alive once and now I’m not_  that slip into the mind in the darker moments of the night, those places in between the streetlights where the cold just jabs its fingers through his ribs to remind him of what he isn’t, but Stiles has had plenty of time to deal with this. Death is a lot more consistent than life ever was, and even after two meager years Stiles feels like he has a pretty good handle on the whole thing. In fact, it’s gotten to the point where being dead is pretty damn useful most of the time. No matter how far he runs he’s never out of breath, no matter how much he’s cut he never bleeds, and no matter how cold it gets he never seems to freeze. Forever young, forever strong, forever pretty—that’s another bonus; being dead has him looking better than ever. Didn’t do much for his social skills, but it turns out that having flawless skin and the slightest predatory edge to your smile makes people overlook a lot of personal shortcomings. 

All in all, a pretty sweet deal. Even with the little catch about having to regularly drink human blood to keep from drying out. 

Dying itself was the real bitch of the matter, in so many ways. For one, he didn’t get one of those nice storybook endings where he dances with the wrong girl at a party, ignores the way her teeth seem slightly _too_  sharp, and ends up six feet under before the night is out. No, it had taken him two years to die of a brain tumor, two years of stumbling from blurred vision and puking his guts up because he smelled something disgusting that wasn’t there as his cells slowly betrayed him. Two years, seven months, and eight days after diagnosis, Stiles Stilinski died in a hospice bed from the same inoperable brain cancer that had killed his mother. He was twenty-one. He had a car, a baby-blue Jeep that he'd offhandedly named Roscoe. He had a college degree in Computer Engineering that his father had practically twisted his arm to get, even though Stiles had told him a million times that it was a pointless waste of already scarce money. He had a father. 

Then there were seven days from the time his heart stopped beating to the time his eyes opened again. Darkness had been all around him, pushing against his still lips and masking his eyes even when he was positive they were open. From somewhere overhead came the muffled sound of a woman weeping, as though she were crying on the other side of a door. Some belief struck him in that moment, a frightening sureness that the woman was his mother. Frantically he began to crawl for the noise, punching and clawing until everything began to churn around him in the darkness. Part of his mind registered that his fingers were touching crumbling soil and he wondered at the oddity of it even as he dug his way upwards. Up and up and up; six feet is a lot farther than you think it is when it’s through hard-packed dirt. Yet he never tired nor choked on the lack of air, and when he reached the surface he found himself face to face with a woman he’d never seen before. About his age, with fiery red hair and a golden party dress that sparkled in the moonlight. He remembers being entranced with the glimmer of it, noticing the black curves of dirt under her fingernails as they pressed over tightly closed eyes. Then the woman pulled her hands away from her face, took one look at him, and wailed into the silence of the night. Not in terror, like any normal person who just watched someone dig themselves out of a grave would have, but a sustained note of mourning like the call of a loon across misty waters.

Or like the cry of a wolf separated from its pack.

He had admired the curl of her lips as she smiled sharply at him and stuck her hand out for a shake. “I’m Lydia Martin.” It was half announcement, half offer.  
Stiles abruptly sunk his new fangs into her wrist and drank like he was starving. It was the beginning of a beautiful kind of friendship.

That had been two years ago, though. They had never actually found who had turned him into a vampire (he refused to refer to this mysterious person as a “sire”, because it was way too creepy for words), but most of his new biology hadn't been too complicated to figure out. He disliked the painful itch of the sun on his skin, the smell of garlic was like a blow to the face, he couldn't so much as cross a running stream, and he preferred to sleep under his bed rather than on top of it. It had been rough in the beginning and Stiles had at least three panic attacks before he got a handle on the fact that he was dead and could never go back to his old life. Still, he wasn't completely alone in the world and since then, Lydia had helped him get a night job at a computer programmer’s. His job mainly entailed testing new software and debugging it as he went, but it gave him something to do with the quieter hours he was now confined to. He, in turn, hailed Lydia as the Banshee Queen and fixed her computer every time her idiotic lizard boyfriend downloaded another virus on it while watching porn. It was all about the little things. 

Now, though, was one of those days where he wasn’t completely sure that she didn’t lose her mind somewhere on the gravelly road to becoming an omen of death. For five minutes he had been desperately praying this whole thing was a hideous prank as his eyes scanned over the lease contract in front of him, but the hard edge to Lydia’s expression said she wasn’t joking around. 

"Lydia…are you seriously asking me to move in with a _werewolf_? Never mind how not-okay it is that they exist and no one ever told me about it, but isn’t there supposed to be some kind of blood rivalry between our species? Y’know, like in Underworld? I know it’s hard to kill a person twice, but I think I enjoy my head being attached to my neck. It would really bum me out if anyone ever tried to separate the two. What if he tries to eat me?” A perfectly manicured, strawberry blonde eyebrow arched at his whining, and she did that marvelous thing where she looked incredibly put-upon by Stiles' entire existence.

"No, Stiles, there is no blood rivalry between vampires and werewolves. There _might_  be a blood rivalry between vampires and banshees though, and the sooner you move out of my apartment, the shorter that rivalry will be.” He moved to protest, but she held up one dainty finger to hush him. “Jackson is moving in with me, and that means you’re vacating. As far as I can tell, Derek Hale is asking for someone to front half his monthly rent and to be left alone on a special night every lunar cycle. He won’t bother you if you don’t bother him, and you're the one that's more likely to take a bite out of his hide. Besides all that, it’s away from moving water, there’s only one window in your bedroom, and he doesn’t strike me as the type to care when you hog the bathroom to puke.” She never let the fact that vampirism hadn’t totally cured his tumor go unmentioned. While his vision had improved to greater than any human could hope for and the crippling headaches were gone, he still experienced some of the spatial difficulties and phantom smells he’d had before he died. The latter issue often led him to the bathroom at all hours of the night, retching until the toilet bowl looked like the scene of a murder. It was one of the few things he resented about being dead. It was his turn to huff indignantly, and to his surprise, Lydia’s expression softened to sympathetic. “Look, the contract is only for three months. If you absolutely hate it after that, I’ll help you find a new place. But just give this one a shot, for me?” 

Stiles felt his eyes narrow as they stared at one another across the table of the small coffee-and-more-if-you-know-who-to-ask shop they were sitting in. He took a single sip of his “latte” (O-Neg covered heartily with milk foam) and broke down, nodding at her and scrambling to grab up the packet of papers. A sunshine smile played across the shell pink of her lips, and Stiles had to avoid the obvious “You’re going to be the death of me” pun. 

He signed the papers.


End file.
